And Ran With Them
by Raquel Spade
Summary: As in, "I took the characters' names and basic attributes and ran with them." And I ran pretty far seeing as they're at an American high school. AU, M for language and smut. AyaxEve, FrauxCastor, and I suppose TeitoxHakuren if you try really hard.
1. Another Day

**And Ran With Them**

_As in, "I took the characters' names and basic attributes and ran with them."_

_First fic, un-beta'd, help me out with a review! And if you don't have anything useful to say, feel free to post random song lyrics, and I'll see if I can identify them._

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><p>"I said say hello, you stupid kids."<p>

Most of the students tore themselves from painting their nails or playing hangman at least long enough to look their new classmate up and down, decide he wasn't that interesting, and roll their eyes at the teacher. One of the guys in the front row even said "Hey" disinterestedly.

Looking at this student, the blonde teacher asked, "Who you texting, Haru?"

"My girlfriend," the boy responded without looking up from the iPhone he held on top of his books.

"Just making sure."

The small, dark-haired boy at the front of the room sighed. It was only four minutes into first period and he already knew that this place could never compare to his old school. Even if Mikage had come with him...

"Park it, kid. Doesn't matter where. Today's a mental health day, so, don't worry about learning anything either," said the man who was rapidly becoming the worst excuse for a teacher Teito had ever seen.

Still, he answered semi-politely, "Thanks, Mr. ..."

"Frau. No 'mister.'"

Teito forced himself to walk away before he made some comment about how he didn't deserve to be called "mister" anyway. Getting in trouble (though he seriously doubted he would, seeing how this guy felt about discipline) was not something he wanted to do on his first day. He headed for the back row where he could sulk in peace.

None of the other students even looked up at him as he passed, busy sleeping or playing Fruit Ninja or whatever. He reached an empty desk near the corner...then realized it was a series of empty desks. A circle of them, surrounding a tiny girl with her pink hair in a long braid. Teito met her exposed eye - the other was covered by an eyepatch - but only for an instant before looking away uncomfortably and shivering. What an unpleasant feeling...and, on second thought, maybe she was a boy...

Teito looked around briefly, seeing that if he went back the way he came, he could take a seat in the front row. He really didn't want to be near that useless teacher now excitedly digging something out of his desk, so, gathering his nerve, he asked, "C-can I sit here?" He gestured to a desk diagonally in front of the...student.

With an innocent and earnest expression, he/she replied, "You can see what happens if you try."

Teito turned 90 degrees and took a seat on the other side of the room.

As the kids behind him began grinding erasers and tearing loose leaf to practice rolling joints, Teito stared hopelessly at the ceiling. How had he ended up here, alone in a public school classroom full of scary and idiotic people? He lifted his head a fraction of an inch so he could check on Frau - the word "Playboy" clearly showed from behind the textbook he was kind-of trying to pretend to read. Teito groaned and dropped his head back again, closing his eyes. Immediately Mikage appeared in his mind. Mikage laughing. Mikage talking. Mikage smiling. Just smiling. Smiling at him. Always smiling. Always crinkling the corners of his brown eyes in happiness as the sun shone in his messy blonde hair.

Except when he told Teito they were moving. He wasn't smiling then.

Teito rubbed his still-closed eyes, discreetly wiping away the gathering tears. _That _was how he'd ended up here, in this madhouse. Mikage was his best friend, his only friend, his brother...his parents had unofficially adopted the little orphan Teito, giving him food and shelter and clothes and even paying for him to attend the special academy school with Mikage. Teito felt his face flush slightly as it always did when he considered how much he owed the Fyulong family, and rubbed his eyes again in case anyone was looking. But they never made him their son, so he couldn't go with them when Mr. Fyulong got a new job. He was forced to remain, moving out to an orphanage, required to attend public school like the others. If only he and Mikage had really been brothers...his favorite memory surfaced, and he watched it play in his mind with an aching chest...Mikage, a playground slide, a blonde boy...

Somewhere among the memories of Mikage now running through Teito's head like a YouTube playlist, 50 minutes disappeared, and Teito stood to the sound of the bell. He hoped the next class wouldn't be anything like the first.

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><p>Eve dropped her bag on the table heavily, frustrated from a long day of especially useless chatter from her "pretty friends." At least her hair looked nice, she thought vaguely as it fell into her vision - long, straight, and brown like milk chocolate.<p>

"Hi," said Kuroyuri, tossing her own long pink braid over her shoulder. Though she was a freshman and Eve a senior, Eve considered Kuroyuri her closest "fun friend." Haruse, an incredibly tall, black-haired, basically mute senior (her standard description if any of her other friends forgot who he was), was another of these friends. He was also how Eve and Kuroyuri had met, because he was dating the smaller pink-haired girl. Eve liked them a lot. They actually went out and did things instead of sitting around watching TV and taking pictures of themselves all the time.

Eve skipped a friendly greeting and got straight to what she'd been forced to think about all day. "Who IS this kid?"

Kuroyuri blinked up at Eve behind Haruse's enormous shoulders, then once her thoughts caught up to Eve's pointed to a scrawny dark-haired boy sitting by himself a few tables ahead of them.

"Oh." Eve hadn't been expecting to _see_ him, much less have a class with him, after all the insane rumors she'd been hearing. For example, she'd been assured the boy was literally three feet tall. She was a little disappointed to find that he wasn't quite that short.

After studying him a moment, she sat down and turned to Kuroyuri, still having a conversation across a statue-esque Haruse. "Is he really from that academy school?"

The pink-haired girl shrugged.

"Is he an orphan?"

Another shrug.

"Well, I heard he is."

Kuroyuri stared at Eve patiently.

"Can you fucking say something?"

"I don't fucking know anything about him," Kuroyuri said without any hint of negative emotion, "besides that he's in my history class, so why don't you ask him?"

The brown-haired girl shot the other a theatrical exasperated look in place of responding and scooted her chair back across the hideous carpet installed before the birth of Christ to stand up again. The bell rang out in the hallway and echoed through the high-ceilinged library, telling the assembled students to take their seats. Eve, however, ignored it, as she, as a senior, had a right to do. She walked a little faster though. She had places to be.

"Teito Klein." She approached the boy from behind and he jumped then turned around, already half-scowling at whoever was intruding on his silence. She just smiled. "I've been hearing about you all day!" she said as she took the chair next to him and leaned on her elbow, putting her face very close to his. He turned red and fixed his books with the glare he wanted to use on Eve. She couldn't hold in a laugh. "You're so cute!" she cried, ruffling his hair, meant in a sisterly way and interpreted in a mocking way. Teito stiffened slightly, but still didn't say anything, so Eve continued. "I've got loads to ask you about. You're a freshman, right? And I heard you're from the Academy?" He stared sullenly at his books. Following his eyes, Even noticed that they didn't look all that nice. His clothes either, now that she noticed. Just a brandless navy blue hoodie and nondescript jeans. Not at all characteristic of an Academy student - everyone knew you had to be super rich to go there. Odd.

"Hello?" she said, waving a hand in front of his face. This wasn't working. She adopted a softer tone, as though speaking to a small child. Or a cat. He reminded her of a cat. "Hey, I'm just trying to get to know you," she started to say, but an unfamiliar male voice spoke over her.

"Leave him alone."

The voice was calm and even and apparently had no idea who it was talking to. Eve's temper flared. She was trying to have a nice conversation, there was _no _need to tell her what to do.

She turned around and took a guess. Pointing at an overweight junior who was staring at her, she said, "Listen, punk, I'm not even doing anything!" but was cut off again.

"Over here, Eve."

As it turned out, the voice did not belong to the now wide-eyed junior, but to a thin student at the table behind Teito and Eve with long blonde hair in a low ponytail and wire-framed purple eyes which met Eve's pale blue ones with something between dislike and disinterest.

"Do I know you?" Eve said huffily, still frustrated at how unsuccessful her friendliness was turning out to be. She looked the blonde boy over, since she'd only ever seen him from behind (and, honestly, had thought he was a girl since the beginning of the year...).

The boy raised an eyebrow and Eve raised one back, but, unfortunately for the spectating study hall students, the librarian walked in at that moment to take attendance.

Eve sighed and stood, returning to her place in the back next to Haruse. She happened to actually like the librarian, Razette, even if the woman were really weird and never spoke, just kinda hummed. And besides, the faster attendance was taken, the more time Eve could spend in the main office.

Razette took attendance while singing to herself in what Kuroyuri had dubbed "mermaid language." It really just sounded like baby talk, if you asked Eve, but prettier. She smiled when she was finished and hummed two notes of approval, waved cutely at Teito who didn't even notice, then, unfazed, moved gracefully toward the long check-out desk along the side of the room.

Eve slung her bookbag over her shoulder, waved to Kuroyuri and Haruse, checked to see if the blonde boy was looking at her (he wasn't, and besides that he wasn't worth her time at the moment), and zipped over to Razette.

"May I go and help in the main office today? Please?" the brown-haired girl asked, as she did every day.

Razette made a happy-sounding "aah" noise and nodded, causing the purple hair that fell to her waist to ripple slightly. With a quick "thanks!" Eve immediately pushed off the desk and half-ran to the door.

Right as she reached the door, it opened away from her, and she collided hard with a junior, Konatsu, of whose life she was extremely jealous. The secretary, Mr. Hyuuga, who Eve considered her gay best friend, had chosen this boy as his assistant, so he got to spend much of his time in the office rather than in class. Then again, he had to take math at the university in the evenings, but he actually seemed to enjoy that. Somehow. Freak.

She blinked at boy whose brown eyes had jumped to hers in surprise. They were the exact same height, Eve noticed idly.

"Sup, Konatsu."

"Are you headed down to the office?" he asked needlessly, pushing his blonde hair off his forehead and adjusting his watch. He was such a restless kid. His neck caught her attention - he was wearing a tie. And not just a tie. A bow tie. How...Konatsu.

"What are you all dressed up for?"

Konatsu unbuttoned and rebuttoned the sleeve cuffs of his Oxford shirt. "I have to leave early today, so Mr. Hyuuga sent me down here to find an extra helper. Meaning besides you. Since Mr. Ayanami is free."

Eve turned right around and called, "Hey, Teito, how'd you like to help in the office for this period? Just for today? I'll introduce you to everyone..."

She heard Konatsu move to look over her shoulder. "The transfer student is in this study hall?" he muttered in a way that meant Eve didn't actually need to answer. Not that she would. It was like an unspoken game that she and Konatsu played. Who could ask the other more questions without ever answering one the other asked?

Teito looked up at her with big green eyes and great annoyance. She beckoned to him with an exaggerated arm motion, which made the ponytail boy glare at her. She sighed and abandoned her attempt to talk to Teito.

"Anyone want to come help in the office? Konatsu has to leave and Mr. Hyuuga wants someone to...um..." She trailed off, seeing that the students in her study hall had all suddenly become either deaf or absurdly studious. Eve popped her lips in an expression of awkwardness and frustration (a trademark of her favorite - though very diva - pretty friend Misa). She'd never been anything but nice to these people.

Haruse eventually met Eve's glare and, though he was holding an already fast-asleep Kuroyuri like one would hold a new baby, rose to his full six feet and five inches, gathered his and his girlfriend's belongings with one oversized hand, and followed Eve to the office silently.

Eve forgot about Teito and his ponytailed admirer and skipped down the hallway. Two of her favorite people in the _world _were in that office.

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><p>The red-haired man wanted nothing more than to bang his head against the table. The longer he stared at the wooden grains and listened to his stoned companion, the more appealing this idea became.<p>

He was working on calculating whether it would be more beneficial - considering used energy and time and accounting for air resistance - to knock out himself or Labrador with the empty chair to his left when the Teachers' Lounge door opened to admit two more men, Frau and Lance. Castor stood up so fast and greeted them so loudly that Frau's eyebrows disappeared into his spiky hair. Labrador, whose back was to the door, stopped talking, turned around slowly, and blinked his huge purple eyes, smiling dreamily the whole time.

"How's it going?" said Frau, trying, and mostly failing, to hold back his laughter at the look of intense relief on Castor's face.

Castor composed himself quickly and adjusted his glasses, which had come askew due to his sudden movement. "Lab was just telling me about...he was telling me a lovely story. Have a seat, stay a while."

Lance flicked his long curly hair out of his face with a jerk of his head, adjusted his gray sweatpants, and took a seat across the table from Labrador, leaving the chair with which Castor had been contemplating self-harm open for Frau. He did it almost without thinking - Castor and Frau always sat together. They just went together. They'd been friends since they were teenagers and now were reminiscent of an old married couple.

Castor and Frau sat down at the coffee-stained table and, sure enough, began bickering.

"Mikhail was perfect in my class, again," said Frau tauntingly.

"Ohh, that boy is a demon..." Castor realized Frau was trying to provoke him and snorted. "Actually, I'm not surprised in the least that you would say that. You don't teach, you don't even look at your students. You should hear what they say about you in my class-"

"What do they say? That they love the class?"

"That they're all going to fail the standardized graduation exams for history."

"Only the ones who are like you would say something like that. Everybody else loves me."

"Only the ones who are like me? Is this a joke?"

"You're right. Only the ones who are like you would say that, and _everybody _loves me."

"I can't believe you sometimes."

"You love me." Frau was grinning wickedly.

Castor only shook his head and looked out the window.

Labrador chose that moment to reach over the begin playing with Castor's hair.

The violated man tried to swat the other's hand away. "Oh God, Lab, what are you doing? Don't touch me-"

Labrador ignored him and, as Castor protested more and more loudly, explained to no one in particular that Castor's hair was the exact shade of Labrador's dog's fur.

Frau sighed. "Lab, not this again. We go over this like every week. _You don't have a dog_."

Without dropping his hand, Labrador continued on to another topic which may or may not have been related in his odd and drugged mind. "I had a new student in one of my biology classes."

"That's the transfer student we all got an email about on Monday," Lance said as he shot a paper ball into the trash can across the room.

"But he's a freshman. Why was he in my biology class?"

It was statements like that that made the other men stop and wonder if Labrador was faking it. It took him ten minutes of pulling at drawers to notice that his students Saran-wrapped his desk shut, but after one period he'd managed to notice that the new boy was a freshman in a sophomore class?

Lance flicked his head again and explained patiently, "He's from the Academy. They take biology as freshmen over there."

Labrador seemed satisfied by that answer and let go of Castor's hair, transfixed by something in the sky that no one else could see. Frau smoothed the abused hair, earning himself an angry glare.

"What, you want me to leave it sticking up? I guess then you'd look more like me. That's what you're going for, isn't it?"

Castor kicked Frau's shin - hard - in the process of crossing his legs.

"Ah!" cried Frau, putting on a pouting face. "Now kiss it and make it better."

Castor ignored him, and Lance chuckled quietly to himself. He tore another paper at random from the corkboard behind him. A reminder that all library books must be turned in by next Tuesday, before winter break. Storing that information nowhere in his brain, he crumpled the paper and shot it across the room.

"I had him too," said Castor. "The new boy, Teito."

"Me too," Frau said, nodding.

Lance threw a piece of newspaper. He missed, muttered "damn" under his breath, and heaved himself from his chair to retrieve the paper wad.

"He seems very nice," Castor mumbled, wondering how he was going to find something for dinner.

"Mmhmm," Frau answered, without a clue how nice the boy was.

Lance pushed his hair out of his face and sat down again, with his knees far apart and two feet of his chair off the ground. He wasn't even listening to them anymore. His boys were playing their rival that night, and coaching now occupied most of his thoughts.

The four teachers settled into a comfortable silence, broken only by the protests of Lance's paper basketballs as he disfigured them and the occasional footsteps or conversation of students passing by in the hall. Even Labrador remained quiet, hypnotized by something among the empty branches of the trees in the courtyard.

Along with their students, they waited for the bell to ring, signalling the end to another day.


	2. That's New

**And Ran With Them**

_Suuuuupppppp. As you may have noticed updates will be few and far between - this whole college thing leaves little time for story-writing._

_Anyways, as pathetic as I sound saying it, REVIEW. Please:) You're still welcome to share song lyrics, or a movie quote, or, hey, how bout a 07 Ghost quote...I just want to know you were here... #patheticpatheticpathetic_

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><p>Eve knocked on the door, but only out of habit. She knew Aya didn't have a meeting. She barely waited for the muffled, bored-sounding "Come in" before bounding into the office.<p>

"Hi!" she called across the tidy room, and she saw the white-haired man's expression change from cold to almost a smile as he motioned for her to close the door. White-haired meaning he had white hair, not that he was old. He was actually very young for a principal and, Eve thought, quite handsome.

"Hello, Eve," said Mr. Ayanami in his deep, lovely voice as he stretched from a position he'd obviously been in for a long time and scratched his head under the band of the captain's hat he always wore.

"Want me to help with something?" she asked brightly. "Or can I just talk to you?"

"Whichever you want to start with, since I know you'll eventually do both." The man's near-smile was now more of his usual smirk. "I do have some papers waiting for me in my mailbox, if you could go get them."

"Okay!" Eve opened the door she'd just closed and passed through into the lobby area of the main office, to the familiar sight of unwatered potted plants and plain wallpaper and the familiar smell of coffee and copies and the familiar sound of bad oldies music and Mr. Hyuuga tormenting Konatsu. She walked past the secretary's desk to the wall of teachers' mailboxes and picked up the papers in Aya's. She turned back to Hyuuga and Konatsu, who seemed to be engaged in a physical struggle involving a phone cord.

"Eve, babe, I _love_ that shirt, and can you untie this please?" Hyuuga said, speaking over Konatsu's noises of frustration. Their hands were knotted together, and honestly, she didn't care to find out how they'd gotten that way.

Eve checked what shirt she was wearing (a new floral-printed flowy top that Misa said matched the blue of her eyes _perfectly_), thanked Hyuuga, and leaned over the desk to disentangle the two on the other side. After a few minutes, she realized she was doing more harm than help. She raised her hands in surrender, and with a muttered "Um...sorry, guys..." took the papers she'd come for and backed around the corner into Aya's office.

She closed the door again and dropped the documents in front of the principal.

"I was about to come looking for you," he said, his head still bent over whatever he was working on. "You _were _faster than Hyuuga though."

She laughed lightly. Hyuuga seemed to be keeping his job solely because of his friendship with Ayanami. All he ever did was boss Konatsu around and eat lollipops.

Pulling her hair out of her face - it was down and wavy, because she hadn't felt like dealing with it that morning - she plopped herself sideways into the cushioned chair in front of the sturdy wooden desk where Aya was working. Once she was comfortably seated with her legs hanging over one armrest and her elbows supporting her from the other, she asked, "Guess what?"

Aya signed the bottom of a page and his gaze flicked up to her from under his hat's brim. "What?"

Just a glance from his violet eyes from behind those snowy bangs made her almost forget what she was going to say. She pressed on.

"I passed my math test!" Eve announced, cocking her head cutely as she beamed with pride.

He just chuckled and tapped the edges of a stack of sheets against the desk to align them. "Did you pass because Hyuuga helped you study, or because you didn't actually need help studying?"

She faked hurt. "I _did_ need help! I kept forgetting that one rule about alternating series, remember?"

Ayanami raised an eyebrow at the girl across from him. "Was that on the test?"

"Well...it...kind of?"

"No."

"No," she said, and crossed her arms, pretending to sulk. That wasn't really comfortable, though, so she quickly uncrossed them to support herself again.

He simply smirked and returned his attention to his paperwork.

Eve, looking away from the white-haired man, studied the huge painting hanging on the wall beside the door for the millionth time. It was her favorite thing in the office, apart from Aya himself of course. To the left, the side closer to the door, there was a man standing in a light space filled with organic shapes - Eve thought it was a desert. The man faced the right, toward Aya's desk. As the viewer followed the man's line of vision, the background grew steadily darker and more jagged, until at the other end of the painting there was no desert but something like the inside of a cave, where a man identical to the first stood looking back at his twin. In the middle, where light faded to dark, there was an angel with enormous wings, face bent down but eyes looking out at whoever stood before him. His haunting eyes were the most fascinating part, along with the feathers in the wings...so many tiny, careful brush strokes...and for some reason, they'd been covered with another layer of paint, as though the transitioning light and dark were made of smoked glass behind which the angel loomed. How painful it must have been to cover such incredible work. Eve had decided long ago that the artist shouldn't have done it - the angel by himself would have made a beautiful painting.

After a few moments of contemplation, Eve spoke up again. "Seriously, don't you get bored in here? All day, staring at forms, not even any music playing - why don't you let Hyuuga come in here and keep you company?"

"He used to be allowed to come in, but I got tired of being offered a lollipop every ten minutes," he answered wearily, as though the memory alone had taken all his patience.

"So you sit here and don't talk to anyone. All day."

"All day."

"_No one_?" she asked incredulously.

"Occasionally I have the _privilege_ of taking a phone call," he replied, stressing "privilege" to the point of making it mean the opposite.

Eve sat and thought a minute, absent-mindedly braiding a small piece of her hair. "Then, do you want me to leave?"

Ayanami's pen stopped in its tracks and he looked up at her sharply. It was a semi-logical question based on their dialogue, but still, how could she ask such a thing?

"Of course I don't want you to leave."

"Are you sure? Because if you have important-"

"Stay." His voice was flat and beginning to take on its natural cold tone, which he never used on Eve. He cleared his throat as though to warm it up again and the brown-haired girl, somewhat shocked by the harshness of the order, turned her head to look back at the painting she was no longer facing because she'd swung her feet off the arm of the chair.

"Eve, I've been letting you come and sit in here during your study halls for years now. If I wanted you to leave I would have said something by now."

"Well- But- I don't know, I just never thought about how much you must have to do, and- I mean, maybe you just put up with me but secretly think I'm really annoying, I don't usually pick up on stuff like that-"

While she tried to explain why she suddenly felt like such a burden, Ayanami stood and walked around his desk, pulling a metal folding chair out of its resting position against the wall. He set it near Eve, sat down, and leaned towards her.

"Stop."

She stopped.

He looked sternly into her perfect pale blue eyes. "If you think you should stop coming to visit me, you're absolutely wrong. I'd get so bored I'd send Hyuuga _and_ Konatsu after you."

Eve laughed a bit sheepishly and replied, "Don't worry, I would have come back tomorrow anyway."

And the next recorded instant in either of their minds was the meeting of their lips.

The kiss lasted either an eternity or a second, but immediately after it ended, Eve looked at Ayanami, terrified. His eyes were still closed, so she grabbed her bag and fled, letting the doors to Aya's room and to the office slam behind her. She had no idea how the kiss had happened. She hoped desperately that she hadn't started it. She'd kind of always wanted to kiss Aya, had dreams about it, considered it in the back of her mind, but she would _never_ do it in real life. What must he think of her now? She was officially freaking out by the time she reached her locker, twisting through her combination with a shaking hand. Thank God the hallways were empty, she thought as she threw a few random things into her bag and grabbed her keys, ignoring that there were still a good 45 minutes in the school day. During the drive home, she tried to convince herself that she'd imagined the whole thing.

Back in the office, under the gaze of an angel, Ayanami pulled off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair, cursing himself behind shut eyes. That had gone exactly the wrong way.

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><p>"Please leave that stack alone, those are the ones I've graded but haven't put in the computer, and they're in alphabetical order..."<p>

"How do you know it's that stack?"

"Because I put them there, in the middle, so I'd know which ones I haven't put in the computer."

"Then you mean _this_ stack." Frau pointed to a pile of tests that Castor couldn't even see, because they were apparently on the floor on the other side of his desk.

"You're kidding, right?"

"Nope. You definitely mean these."

Castor set his jaw and glared up at his blonde companion, holding out a hand palm-up so that Frau would hand him the papers. Frau considered this gesture for a bit longer than Castor would have liked, but handed them over.

"And how did they end up there?"

"Well that's a stupid question."

Castor sighed. "Aren't we supposed to say there's no such thing as a stupid question?"

"Ehh, but that _was _a stupid question." Frau laid down on the dirty, dusty tile floor and, crossing his ankles, rested his feet on the edge of Castor's desk.

Castor jumped up, incredibly annoyed. "_Please_! No feet on my desk! It's clean!"

Frau ignored him and picked at his teeth. "Actually I spilled some coffee on it earlier. I wiped it up for you though."

"Please tell me you're joking," Castor said, but he knew he wasn't, because one corner of the desk was indeed dark and a little sticky.

"Nope."

Castor closed his eyes and took a deep breath, decided counting to ten wouldn't be enough, and counted through the prime numbers up to 100. When he opened his eyes he simply adjusted his glasses and, without looking at Frau's offending feet (his shoes were even muddy...okay, maybe he did look), continued marking the math tests before him with his red pen.

But Frau wasn't finished provoking him - within forty-five seconds he'd hooked a picture frame with the toe of his shoe and flicked it off the redhead's desk.

"What are you - ughh, can't you leave me alone? For once? I really need to get these graded..."

The man on the floor, now sitting with his legs crossed like they taught you in kindergarten, studied the photo he had nimbly caught as he replied, "Seriously, Castor, they took the test yesterday. Shoot, I make them wait at least two weeks before I return anything."

"Frau, I am not you."

"Who's this?" Frau turned the picture around so Castor could see it. He already knew which picture it was because of the frame - black like her hair - but he pretended to study it, squinting.

"Oh, that's my sister."

"Wow, all grown up! She's cute!"

"_Don't_."

Frau raised an eyebrow at Castor then continued to stare at the picture.

"Okay, give it back."

"Why? I'm not doing anything to it."

"You're violating it with your eyes. Just give it back."

"I'm _what_?"

"Frau." He held out his hand, palm-up like before.

The other teacher rolled his eyes, but returned the photo. Castor was no fun.

When Frau began whistling, the redhead grit his teeth, but by the time he heard the fifth chorus of The Battle Hymn of the Republic he'd had enough. "I've got a _marvelous_ idea. Let's play the quiet game."

"The quiet game?" the blonde frowned. "What's in it for me?"

"Winner...uh...no, loser cleans my desk. Since it's your fault and my desk, I think that's fair."

Frau snorted. "You know you're going to end up cleaning it either way, right? I couldn't meet your OCD standards if my life depended on it."

"Fine, winner gets five bucks."

"Fine."

"All right then, go."

"Wait! What are the rules?"

"Are you kidding me? Your parents raised you, you of all people, and never taught you this game?"

"No way, we used to play this all the time, but there are a million gray areas. Can you cough? Can you drum your fingers? How loudly can you breathe?"

Castor furrowed his eyebrows. "What? Just, don't make any noise. Don't...cause noise. It's pretty straightforward. No coughing, no drumming, no obnoxious breathing, no noise."

"What's 'obnoxious' though?-"

"_Go_."

Frau's competitive side took over and he shut up. He tried going to sleep, which was usually how he won, but he just had too much energy. He stood, looking down at the red-haired man, now contentedly grading away. Enough of that, he thought, and snatched the pen out of Castor's hand. Castor shot him an icy glare, but then opened a desk drawer, took out a nearly full package of the things, selected a new one, and continued where he'd left off.

Hmm. Gonna need a new strategy to stop Castor from his grading.

This was the main objective in Frau's mind, because he knew that once his friend started to do something, he kept doing it until it was finished. Like when you put something in front of an ant to try to make it stop? That little guy's gonna try everything he can to stay on whatever invisible path he thinks he has to follow. He will scale bricks. He will walk around dead worms. He will bite you. But by God, Castor was going to finish that pile of tests. And if he couldn't, he would have to say something. Then Frau would win. Simple!

Frau walked around the desk to stand right behind Castor, his chin resting on the other's shoulder. He breathed as quietly as he could, so he wouldn't get called for that. The other man simply pushed the blonde off of him without moving his gaze from Mikhail's test. There was a lot of red on that one.

As Frau moved away, he grabbed the corner of Castor's glasses, pulling them off the math teacher's face faster than he could try to take them back. With a wicked grin Frau rushed to a student's desk in the front row and stood on it, holding the glasses as high as he could, even though he was almost a head taller than Castor anyway. Castor, who was about 35% blind without his glasses, had no choice but to get up next to Frau on a desk - so Philistine! - and try to climb up the other man and pry the glasses from his grip. Frau was really enjoying himself now.

Castor felt his center of gravity becoming dangerously unstable and, before the blurs of brown that were the evenly spaced desks of his classroom decided to attack him, jumped down semi-gracefully into the open white space in front of the blackboard. His spiky-haired companion, however, fell.

"AH SHIT!" he said as he hit the floor.

Castor was there in an instant, bending down to take his glasses and, once the black frames were back in place, looking at Frau with first intense frustration then glittering triumph. "Well, that didn't take long," he said smugly.

The blonde sprawled on the ground rubbed his head and whined, "Aw, come on, double or nothing, I got this."

Castor raised his eyebrows. "You want to play again?"

"I want to _win_."

"Okay, go."

Castor checked his watch, then resumed his place at his desk once more. At the rate he had been grading, with no more major interruptions, he should be able to finish the tests and pack up with 28 seconds to spare before the bell rang.

That was when Frau got an idea. An awful idea. Frau got a wonderful, _awful_ idea.

Coming up behind Castor like he had before, he poked him hard just under the ribs. Frau knew that alone wouldn't be enough to make Castor yelp, but it did make him jump, after which he adjusted his glasses and went back to ignoring Frau. Frau put his hands on Castor's sides, just where he'd hit him only seconds before, causing Castor to flinch, then as the gesture turned into a hug, turn around and look at Frau - whose head was just behind his own - as though he were the hundred-and-first straw in a hundred pack. What are you doing there? I kind of like you being there, but what are you doing there?

The redhead glanced around the room awkwardly, then figured it was best to let his crazy friend do whatever he was doing. He turned back to his papers, but not all the way, because a hand shot up and caught his chin. Castor swallowed and started to panic a little. Surely he wasn't going to...it had been ages since the last time they...

With his other arm, Frau swiveled Castor's chair around, forcing the other man to face him. He put his forehead against the other's, moved his hand from the chin to the back of the neck, and stared. Just stared.

Castor felt his face growing hotter and hotter, no longer keeping track of the seconds ticking away. He searched Frau's eyes for some sort of message, some reason he was teasing Castor like this, but he found nothing but mischief.

Well.

Mischief and desire.

* * *

><p>The plastic animals were larger than they should have been, and the trees the wrong color, and the mulch smooth against his skin, but those things went unnoticed as a boy with short bleach blond hair towered over the smaller dark-haired one, looking down his nose at the boy thrown on the ground.<p>

The sky was dark but the blonde's face shone as he said, "You don't even have parents! Your mom and dad hated you so much that they died!" for what must have been the billionth time in Teito's life. Then, also for the billionth time, a different blonde boy stepped into the scene, which was starting to resemble a circus. The circus Teito had visited with Mikage's family once. But that too went unnoticed.

The second blonde, the hero, stood protectively over the child lying in the dirt. "Leave him alone." Was that Mikage's voice?

"I'm not even doing anything!" shouted the bully. That wasn't right.

Teito's conscious finally won out, and he opened his eyes to the gray early-morning light, shining through one small, dusty window onto his new, small, dusty room. He rolled onto his side and looked at the red beams of his clock, still blurry to his newly-opened eyes. He read the three numbers over and over before he understood that it was ten minutes before he had to get up. He groaned.

Next to the clock, Teito could see that his phone was blinking. It took him a moment to process what that meant, but once he did, he pounced on it.

_Mikage: Haha yea i know wat u mean. Its so weird that ur not here with us._

Teito looked back at his sent messages to make sure Mikage was saying what Teito thought he was, then typed: _I should be with you. School sucks without you. Even if you were here, it would still suck. That's how bad it is. _

He wanted to say more about how much he missed Mikage and wanted him to come back, but he hated to seem dependent on Mikage. He was, of course, but he didn't want Mikage to know that. If Mikage didn't know, then maybe Teito could pretend it wasn't true.

He hit send, then laid back down and pulled the blankets up to his neck, phone still in hand. Mikage wouldn't text him back right away, he never did, but maybe this time he would. He inhaled deeply, trying to return his heart rate to relaxed levels as he stared at the glowing numbers in front of him.

There was no point in going back to sleep. He was already too awake, and he'd have to turn the alarm off soon anyway. His imagination automatically conjured up his favorite memory-fantasy, his starting point for nearly all daydreams. The weight of Mikage's arm across his shoulders, or his warmth against his back...maybe his arms around his waist for a hug, or even their cheeks pressed together to take a picture...or...

The alarm began to beep suddenly, and Teito stuck out his arm automatically and pressed the buttons along the top of the device at random until the sound stopped. He'd have to look into which button was actually for turning the alarm off at some point, but he didn't care right now. Having the alarm go off after he'd left would be kind of funny, he thought.

He checked his phone to see if maybe he'd missed Mikage's response while he was dozing, but the screen was blank. Just his background. A photo of Teito and Teito's favorite person in the world.

The dark-haired boy rubbed his eyes, and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, out from under the thin white sheets and old gray fleece blanket provided when he moved into this place and the well-loved maroon blanket he'd taken with him when he moved out of his home.

He sighed as he tiptoed across the cold tile, trying to touch it as little as possible while he got dressed in a pair of jeans, a random shirt, and a random hoodie from the small, dark wooden closet in the corner. His home, Mikage's home...he would never live there again.

Less than fifteen minutes later, Teito was closing and locking his door to leave for school, nondescript backpack, clothes, and shoes all in place, phone in hand. Still waiting for Mikage to answer. It would be hours - it always was - but the boy had hope.

Of course it's cold, thought Teito as he began his walk to the bus stop. He couldn't remember ever being cold while he was with Mikage, but now, it's always cold. Expected.

He reached the bus stop with plenty of time to spare, but though checked his phone every other minute, he never noticed what time it was. He was only looking for that little envelope in the corner of the screen. But it didn't show up. Expected.

By the times the bus rolled up, Teito had been joined by other members of his new and dearly hated school - a couple unnaturally-haired girls wearing studded boots up to their knees and long black coats whose glances made Teito scared for his life, almost like the pink haired kid with the eye patch. Public school was full of these people. Expected.

What Teito didn't expect, though, was to see a pair of familiar sharp purple eyes look up at him when he got on the bus, soften a bit, and conjure up a hand to wave at him from the blonde boy's seat in the back.

Stunned, Teito turned red and ducked into the nearest empty seat to where he was standing - a particularly sticky brown seat with several duct tape patches and no remaining padding. No wonder it was empty.

At that moment Teito felt his phone vibrate, and he immediately looked down to see what Mikage had said. When the alert on the screen was not a new message but an alarm he didn't even remember setting, Teito was almost upset enough to forget about the boy with purple eyes. Almost, but not quite.

Especially not when the boy noticed Teito staying in his seat until everyone else had gotten off the bus, waited for him, and walked with him into the building without saying a word.


End file.
